Behaviour as a thing

This article reflects on issues arising from attempts to treat behaviour as an object of scientific and social scientific study. It examines what happens when behaviour is taken as a thing, an object of concern, modification and enquiry. At the heart of the notion of behaviour, this article argues, lies a fundamental ambiguity. The concept’s power, but also its elusiveness, lies in its ability to tack back and forth between two visions: on the one hand behaviour as materialized, objectified action, regular, repetitive and rule-bound, and on the other behaviour as a placeholder, a word to index something we do not yet know or understand. Those are two ways of being a ‘thing’.